Come Inside
by indelible
Summary: MoriHaruhi, KyouyaHaruhi, some HikaruHaruhiKaoru. Wherein Kyouya deceives, Haruhi is lost, and Mori picks up the pieces. AU, inprogress.
1. a little boy and a little girl, part one

**Come Inside**

* * *

**mirror, mirror**

_There was once a dreadfully wicked hobgoblin who made a mirror which reflected everything good and beautiful in a way that it dwindled almost to nothing, and anything that was bad and ugly appeared worse than it already was._

_That's the funniest thing about it, thought the hobgoblin._

_One day he was flying high among the clouds, flashing his mirror on the land below. Suddenly it slipped from his hands and fell to the earth, shattered into millions of little pieces, and they flew about all over the world. If anyone got a speck of it in his eyes, it stayed there, and from then on he would see everything crooked or ugly._

_Some people got splinters in their hearts, and then the heart would turn into a lump of ice. The hobgoblin was pleased and watched as the tiny bits of glass continued to whirl about in the air, every tiny splinter possessing the same wicked power as the whole mirror._

_He laughed._

* * *

**a little boy and a little girl, part one**

* * *

_First comes heavy breathing  
Staring at the ceiling  
What will happen next  
_

_-i don't wanna know_

Takashi hates this place.

It is his first time attending a wake. The air is stale, the atmosphere is stifling, and everywhere he looks there are people exchanging whispered snippets of gossip that seem too inappropriate for a solemn occasion. He does not blame them. It is impossible to feel the gravity of the situation when the deceased did not play a significant role in your life.

The aforementioned deceased is one of his family's favorite lawyers. She was a kind, upbeat woman with beautiful eyes and a brilliant smile who gave him candy from her purse and chocolates for Christmas. He's seen her several times before, and it confuses him, at first, when he sees the woman encased in a pristine white box with flowers in her hair and rosemaries set neatly on the swell of her breasts, underneath her clasped hands. He hears his little brother ask if she has trouble breathing, that beautiful woman in the box, and their mother smiles a little too darkly and tells him that she is dead.

"Like my little dog?" Satoshi asks curiously.

"Yes," their mother answers, "just like your little dog."

Satoshi ponders on this for a moment, before he asks, genuine concern in his voice, "do you think they'll be able to find each other there?"

Wherever 'there' is, Takashi's not sure if he wants to find out soon.

His mother's tall form turns away from them slightly, impatiently gesturing to Takashi. He takes out a black and silver envelope from his black coat and places it on her open palm as carefully as he could. Her fingers curl around the thick envelope, and she begins to walk away, telling them to amuse themselves for a while. He watches the edges of his mother's black kimono swish with her abrupt movement, and sees the pale sliver of white skin when she bows before a young man in greeting.

His mother says her regrets to the woman's husband, whose eyes never leave his wife's face, and Takashi wonders if this is a practiced speech, given his mother's formal, detached way of saying things. But her voice is calm and cool, and it has always been pleasing to everyone's ears, especially to his.

Takashi sits next to a little girl with wide eyes and brown hair who is playing with a sprig of poppies and rue in her hand, looking like a lost little Ophelia. He looks at her for a minute until he lifts a hand to touch the flowers clasped in her tiny hands.

"Hey," is all he offers, and she looks at him, nonplussed.

"Hello." It sounds more like a question than a greeting.

He normally does not do this. He is not the most sociable kid in the planet, but there is something sad about her, something off and upsetting that makes him want to see her happier than she is right now. Her wide-eyed innocence is a stark contrast to the sorrow that she wears on her sleeve, and there is no pride in her consciousness of this fact.

_That may be the only reason he is telling her his name._

No one deserves to look like that.

"I'm Takashi," he says. Ten inches of air and five thousand superficial reasons separate their bodies from each other, but Takashi crosses the open area of forbidden friendship to hold out his hand to her. He takes her hand into his and leads her to a corner of the room, right next to the flower arrangements, away from prying eyes and sorrow and whispered words of regret.

"Do you like flowers?" He asks, eyes resting on the poppies and the rue. They're almost wilting, he notes. Just how long has she held on to them?

She purses her thin lips and fiddles with the rue. "No." _Wear your rue with a difference_.

"Do they mean anything?"

She nods.

"Sorrow," she whispers, looking at the coffin with glassy eyes. "She was my mother."

Takashi can't help but feel nauseous and drained and angry at himself (_stupid, you're so insensitive_) for making her unhappy. "Oh," he says, a little too breathlessly and uncomfortably. He wonders if he should say sorry, but he does not trust his voice enough. So he takes a sprig of violets from the flower arrangements and tucks it in her hair as gently as he could. She lets him.

"I miss her," she gasps out, and he winces, opening his small arms to her.

"Don't cry."

He learns very early in his life that saying things like that only makes women and little girls cry harder. Her short nails dig into his skin uncomfortably, and he hides his pain, because, surely, this is nothing compared to what she is feeling right now.

They sit in relative silence for a few minutes, and he runs his fingers through her hair, more out of fascination than any semblance of comfort. She is tired and sleepy and he is distracted and unsure of himself, but they can't find the strength or motivation to let go.

When he is called by his mother, his fingers still in her hair and, when he began to pull away, the back of his hand lingers against the violets in her hair. He gives her a shaky smile, as if to say, _please let me be your friend_, and she stares at him, her eyes flickering with some strange emotion, but makes no move to encourage him.

He misses the inquiring look in his mother's eyes, and the way her gaze slides over to the little girl is a little too critical and severe, but she looks away for a minute and sighs in satisfaction (or something close to it).

He goes home thinking of violets tangled in brown hair, flowers fisted in not-quite-white and not-quite-strong hands, and lost little girls with no mothers to hold on to, and realizes that he does not even know her name.

* * *

_There was once a little girl and a little boy. They were not brother and sister, but they loved each other just as much as if they were._

* * *

Afterwards, Takashi often sees the little girl around his home, usually when he is practicing kendo or patiently working on problem sheets his tutor prepares for him. It seems that his mother has taken a liking to the little unnamed girl, having had only two boys who can barely connect with her in a lot of ways. Takashi takes lessons in etiquette and gets drilled in foreign languages, while the girl acts as his mother's little dress-up doll, being paraded around by maids in dozens of expensive costumes with frills and lace and ribbons made of silk or cotton. Takashi knows rather than feels that he should be somewhat jealous that she is getting all the attention, but he finds that he simply does not care.

One day, he catches her peeking into the library and tugs at the sleeve of her dress in a slightly rough motion. The fabric feels soft against his palm.

She bites her lower lip, lowering her eyes and saying in her defense, "I like books."

He eyes her carefully and she stares back. When he realizes that the staring contest would not come to an end soon, he closes his eyes and sighs. "What are you looking for?"

He pushes the door open for her, and she smiles.

They spend the next hour leafing through story books with exquisitely drawn pictures, and he reads to her because she wants him to. She listens with rapt fascination.

When one of the maids pokes her head in, calling for him, he stands up, dusts his clothes off, and idly touches the part of her hair where the violets should have been.

"What's your name?"

She smiles a small, secret smile and tells him.

* * *

_In the summer, the two sat underneath the rose bushes all afternoon and played with each other. In the winter, they heated pennies on the stove and put them against the frozen window panes. These made perfect peepholes through which they could gaze at each other.__

* * *

_

They make an effort to maintain their friendship despite their differences.

Mitsukuni is, at first, surprised that she is a commoner, but takes to her like bees to honey. She accepts him for who he is, not what he is supposed to be, and he appreciates – no, adores this little girl who is a little to straightforward and a little too oblivious.

Takashi shares different kinds of closeness with Mitsukuni and Haruhi. With the former, it is a closeness that is reminiscent to loyalty and binding ties, and, although Mitsukuni tells him to stop with the formalities, he finds that he simply cannot act casual around him, or anyone, for that matter.

With the latter, it is a lax kind of devotion, wherein one of them can simply put an end to their friendship, no questions asked. Not that he would want to do that.

They grow up together, go to different schools, mix with different crowds, but, in the end, they always come back to each other.

It is because she is his friend, he reasons. _He_ put violets in her hair. _She_ asked him to read to her.

Haruhi, who has never found the need to justify her relationships with people, does not say anything about the matter.

He likes to think that she feels the same way.

* * *

_One day, it was snowing very hard.__

* * *

_

As far as friendships go, they never fight.

He is a silent type of guy, and she never feels the need to engage him in conversation every minute. They let the silence permeate and fill the whole room, cloaking them like a warm and soft blanket of peace. They never need words.

He does not tell her a lot of things, and she never asks, so when he asks her about her plans for college (never mind the fact that she still has three years to go), she blinks at him and raises a hand to her lips.

"I always thought Tokyo University was the best place to go."

The next day, he files his application to Tokyo University without a second thought. A few months later, Satoshi waves around his acceptance letter, making sure to let Haruhi know immediately that his brother is going there.

"I'll wait for you," Takashi simply says, and goes back to helping her finish her literature essay.

She smiles.

When she steps into the gates of Tokyo University years later, he is there, waiting, as he promised, a hand stretched out for her to take.


	2. a little boy and a little girl, part two

**a little boy and a little girl, part two**

* * *

_That evening, the little girl peeped through the little hole in the window. A large snowflake lay on the edge of one of the window boxes. It grew larger and larger until it took the form of a youth, dressed in the finest white gauze._

_

* * *

_

She has classes in the morning and afternoon, with breaks lasting for more than three hours in between each subject. She doesn't mind as much as Hikaru and Kaoru do. During her spare time, she goes to the library, a place that, for all its intimidating sharp angles and lines, feels vaguely like the library in the Morinozuka residence.

She likes it.

She likes the smell of aged books with lazy, looping scrawls prominently displayed inside random pages that no one ever notices unless they flip through the entire book. Likes the feel of the wooden floors when she sinks to the ground after a calculus lecture, the sound the air conditioners make, the light humming of the ceiling fans in the other section, the curtains with the faded blue color that block out the sun.

Hikaru and Kaoru have a different opinion of it, though.

"What's so special about that stuffy, dingy place anyway?" Hikaru grumbles, once in a while, when he feels particularly mean or unimportant or unsatisfied about the attention (or lack of it) that he receives.

"It has a lot of books," she shrugs, and appeases him by agreeing to go to the nearby café _next time_, always next time, never today.

She wanders into the fiction section, where the bookcases are taller than her and the books outnumber the people in the room. She sidesteps a pair of sophomores who are giggling and pointing at someone from behind their books – ones whose titles, she thinks, they did not even bother to read. Unless, of course, they really planned on reading _The Little Mermaid and other stories_. They don't seem like the fairy tale types.

Then again, neither does she.

She purses her lips and moves to the last row in the section, if only to remain unnoticed and undisturbed. The curtains in this part of the room are slightly askew, and a pale slant of light slithers into the corner, as intrusive and as noticeable as a shadow directly under the sun's gaze. Dust motes seem to filter through the glass windows and fly around in a veritable mini-tornado. It makes her feel sad.

She lets her palm slide over a shelf without books. The wood feels like ice.

_Strange. It isn't even cold in this place._

She lets her fingers tap a few books facing the opposite side of the bookcase, and pulls out a hardbound book that looks old and well-worn --- just the way she likes it.

A raised eyebrow greets her from the other side, the stranger's hand poised in the air as if to pluck the book in her hand from its old spot.

"Oh," she says, her throat locking up, "sorry."

She isn't quite sure why she is apologizing at all. If anything, she feels that she shouldn't even bother to use words. But something in his manner makes her feel that it is her prerogative --- nay, her _duty_ to address him in any respectful manner possible.

Fucking rich people.

The stranger lowers his eyebrow and retracts his hand. When he speaks, his voice sounds bored. Indifferent, almost. "It's fine."

Haruhi blinks, and it takes her a minute to realize that he is already walking away.

She looks down at the book in her hand – _Snow Queen_ – and opens her mouth to speak. "… Thanks," she finishes lamely, and, somewhere in the back of her mind, she imagines two giddy, giggling girls pointing at her from behind their unnamed books and whispering, ever so softly, _isn't that nice?_

* * *

_He was so beautiful and delicate, but all ice --- hard, glittering ice._

* * *

The sky is a hazy mix of clouds and not-quite-clean air, she thinks to herself, pulling at her scarf absent-mindedly, a sharp contrast to the impatient tug of her sleeve courtesy of one irate Hikaru. It is October, and there is something pleasant about the weather, grey clouds and all. Beside her, Hikaru rubs his hands together and exhales slowly. Haruhi's eyes follow the trail of his breath that floats in the stale air; it lingers, strangely, like dew to a fern. On her other side, Kaoru slings an arm over her shoulder, laughing at the way his brother's actions resemble that of a little child's.

"What are we up to today?" Kaoru smoothly asks her, intentionally invading her personal space (or whatever's left of it) like a cunning little fox, as if to gain some sort of reaction from her that doesn't involve blinking and being unflustered. Hikaru bristles, but Haruhi remains undaunted, like a tiny bird perched on a tree where it knows it will never be harmed.

"Hunny-senpai and Mori-senpai still have classes in the afternoon," she shrugs, and the words feel strange on her tongue. _Hunny-senpai and Mori-senpai_. When is the last time she called them by their given names? Certainly not since she has entered university. "So I guess I'm going home."

And so the fox swipes and swipes and tries to fit the little bird into his palms but she is unattainable, unreachable, _untouched_.

Hikaru groans, sidling up to her side, and a couple of passing students stare at them as if they _know_ that something scandalous is going on between these three _freshmen_. _It is none of their business, but could they please tone down the PDA?_ Their eyes change from wary to disgusted to _something that could be envy but maybe really isn't_. Haruhi does not even bother to defend her dignity _and_ her reputation (and, quite possibly, her civil status, although _that's_ been shot to hell several weeks ago). The last time she bluntly exclaimed that they were _not_ having a threesome, she'd gotten a lot of disturbed (disturbing, too) looks from her classmates _and_ teachers. "Bo-ring."

"It's better than the library, though," Kaoru points out, "at least we could crash her house and _not_ get kicked out for… what was the term again?"

Hikaru tilts his head to the side. "Rowdiness?"

"No. It's a different term."

"Disturbing noise?"

"Public indecency?" Haruhi inputs dryly.

Kaoru pretends not to notice her. "That's not it, either. Oh wait --- I remember now. I think it was," and he lowers his voice and raises his eyebrows suggestively, "juvenile delinquency."

Haruhi rolls her eyes. Sometimes, she wonders why she hangs out with these two jerks. Then they offer her ootoro and she remembers.

"Nah, I think it's because of our devilishly handsome looks," Hikaru grins, right after she makes her thoughts public.

"Or our pleasing personalities!" Kaoru crows in glee.

Haruhi smiles a little crookedly. "I'm pretty sure it was the ootoro."

Hikaru and Kaoru both clutch the part where their hearts are supposed to be, perfect mirror images. "You wound us."

Haruhi shrugs again, looks around, and stops in her tracks.

It's been two months since she's seen him. Two months, two days and fifteen hours and why the hell is she counting anyway, she doesn't even know the guy---

Hikaru and Kaoru follow her gaze, and promptly shut up. Their jaws make an audible _clack_, even in the midst of the noise around them. It sounds like a foreboding message that none of them could voice out. She's not sure if she wants to know.

"Who's that?" Haruhi asks, still staring at the stranger from the library talking to a blonde upperclassman (who is trying, unsuccessfully, to flood the grounds with his fake tears).

Almost imperceptibly, Hikaru tenses. He looks away and smiles at her, the movement a little strained. "Who?"

Kaoru watches him, and in his eyes there is something like _danger_, a warning.

Haruhi waits patiently for an answer.

(_she is the tiny bird that will live in the end, because the hunters have come for her fox to take him to a far away place, somewhere where she'll be sure to miss him_)

Hikaru may be strong-willed when it comes to most things, but, under Haruhi's gaze, he cracks, like ice that is left under the sun for too long. His face dissolves into an unbecoming scowl, and his lips thin into a firm, severe line.

"Look," he says, tightening his grip on her arm, "let's just go. He's no one important. Not to you." Hikaru's eyes harden, and, for the barest minute, they turn soft, as if defeated. "At least, he shouldn't be."

Something in the way he looks at her makes her feel that she is stepping into something dangerous, like treading on thin ice, and she knows she shouldn't, but she averts her gaze and looks at the ground.

"Besides," Hikaru continues, trying to diffuse the tension by acting casual about it, "since when did _you_ take an interest in the opposite sex?"

Even when he adopts a teasing tone, she could still feel the undercurrent of discomfort coursing through his vocal chords. It is so strange, but he makes her feel ashamed.

"Shut up," she grins at him, and just like that, the tension is gone. It's almost as if it's never been there at all. It feels wonderful. It shouldn't, but it does.

Maybe this is the reason why they'll be friends, _forever_.

Later, when they go to Hikaru's favorite café and he leaves to talk to a classmate outside, Kaoru asks her, his voice unbearably soft and quiet and a hundred other things that Hikaru will never ever be, if she still wants to know his name.

She does.

Kaoru idly twirls his straw in his fingers, as if trying to decide whether or not to tell her, and she knows he has come to a decision when he lets go and examines his nails, avoiding her eyes.

"His name's Ohtori Kyouya," says Kaoru a little viciously, "and, if I were you, I'd stay away from him."

Ohtori Kyouya.

It sounds fitting, somehow.

Haruhi thinks that now is the best time to shut up, but _she really wants to know the things he would never say_, so she whispers an uncertain "why?" to the air, if not to Kaoru.

Kaoru stops trying to find a flaw in his short, clean nails, and looks her in the eye.

"Because," he breathes out, voice cold and distant, as if he is suppressing something, maybe anger, inside him, because he can't find it in himself to show it to her, "I don't trust him at all."

And, he adds, almost as an afterthought, "He could break your heart."

Haruhi would have liked to tell him that she does not plan on falling in love any time soon, but Hikaru is already waving goodbye to his classmate and making his way back to their table.

It makes her wonder why it isn't hard to fall into a comfortable atmosphere after that.

* * *

_He nodded at the window, and beckoned to the little girl with his hand.__

* * *

_

Tuesday comes, as slowly as the Monday before passes, and she waves goodbye to the twins, who groan about being left for moldy, _smelly_ books. Sometimes, she wishes that they would suffer in silence.

She adjusts the book tucked under her arm, a large collection of well-known short stories, and takes a seat on a couch for two, somewhere in the back of the room, far enough to assure her that no one would be bothering her any time soon.

She's wrong about that.

Someone taps her shoulder while she lazily leafs through _The Happy Prince_, and she raises her eyes a little, just enough to look.

She wishes she didn't.

"Fujioka Haruhi, right?"

There are a million responses running through her mind, but she has always been a simple, direct person, so she asks the first thing she can think of. "How did you know my name?"

The not-stranger with the name smirks a little at that, adjusting his glasses a little. It doesn't hide his eyes, even under the library's light.

"It's hard not to," he says smoothly, taking a seat beside her without asking, "considering the amount of fan girls Mori-senpai has."

"Oh," she says, even though she doesn't understand the logic behind it.

He lets his eyes drift over to the book resting on her lap, takes a moment to let the title register in his mind, and he meets her gaze, once again, in a way that, perhaps, more than one person has complained about in the past. He must really like their reactions. Strange, but she doesn't feel the least bit nervous. It amuses him.

"I assume you know who I am, if the amount of glares I've been receiving from Hitachiin Hikaru is any indication of _that_." He laughs a little soundlessly, and it sounds a little bitter, a little too dry to be considered as humorous.

"You're Ohtori Kyouya," she answers, matter-of-factly, as if he's supposed to know _that_ already. "Is there anything you want?"

He props his arm against the couch and rests his cheek against the palm of his hand. His fingers brush against his lips lightly, almost suggestively, but she doesn't blink, doesn't even get flustered. A wry smile appears on his pale face. "Just this seat next to you whenever we happen to be here at the same time."

Kaoru's voice, so caring and so cold, echoes in her ears, _don't trust him, don't trust him_, and he looks so detached from it all that it scares her how right Kaoru is.

She opens her mouth, and lets out a half-strangled, "why?"

(_pretty little birds shouldn't ask so many questions. the hunters might hear you, and we wouldn't want that, would we?_)

Kyouya's eyes crinkle slightly in the edges, and it softens the sharp lines on his features slightly. "I like the view."

Something tells her that he isn't referring to the scenery outside, but she ignores it and turns back to her book, where _The Happy Prince_ doesn't seem so happy anymore.

* * *

_She was so frightened at the sight that she jumped down from her perch on the window sill. Suddenly, it seemed as if a great, white bird had flown past the window, its shadow looming over her, like a comforting threat, too far away to harm her, but too near in proximity to leave her unsettled._

_The next day, the weather cleared._


	3. falling out and falling in

**falling out and falling in**

**-**

_One day the children were looking at a picture book. The clock in the great church tower struck five, and the little girl suddenly exclaimed, "Something has stung my heart, and now there is something in my eye!" The little boy threw his arms around her neck and the little girl blinked her eyes again and again, but he could see nothing in them, not even tears._

_The little girl thought that it was gone. But it was not. It was one of the splinters from the mirror, and a splinter found its way to her heart, which began to change into a lump of ice. It did not hurt her at all._

"_Why are you crying?" she asked the boy. "It makes you look ugly. There's nothing wrong with me. Look! That rose is worm-eaten, and this one is stunted! How ugly they are!"_

_And she began to pull them to pieces._

Haruhi hates forgetting.

Haruhi leafs through memories the same way Kaoru and Hikaru trace fabric along her arm, testing texture and color in contrast to her bare skin. She takes in every detail, measure for measure, as if one small aspect untouched could make her forget all over again, the same way she has forgotten her mother. And there is always the lingering sadness, not of emotion for the departed, but for herself, because she feels that it is a sacrilege to forget a mother's voice, a mother's touch, a mother's smile.

Morinozuka-san tells her, every day, that she looks just like her mother, only softer, more innocent, more untouchable. And she gets a strange look in her eyes, as if Haruhi is something that she isn't supposed to be, but the moment is always cut short, perhaps so that it could not last in _her_ memory for long.

Haruhi aches inside. She burns because she longs to know why she cannot remember and why they always say that she can be something that she has known too little of. The knowledge that, maybe, she can never (deserve to) know of it makes her hurt more.

If there is one thing about her mother that she is sure of, it is that she was once loved (and is still loved) by other people outside her own family. Morinozuka-san is proof of that.

She finds a photo album in the Morinozuka library, and it is filled with pictures of Haruhi and Takashi and, sometimes, Satoshi, too. Her heart fills with melancholic happiness. It alleviates the pain a little.

She has more pictures and artifacts, strange relics that seem stranger to her when she tries to remember why she keeps them. Sometimes, she considers jotting down everything from memory, but she feels that it would not give justice to the moment that she tries to preserve.

It is an insignificant loss.

She turns the page.

"I remember this," she says out loud, "It was your favorite."

Across from her, Takashi nods and murmurs a quiet "mhm", not even looking up to peer at a photograph of little Haruhi and little Satoshi clinging to a taller Takashi. They are on the beach, making sandcastles in the sky and painting pictures with their laughter. Behind them, the sun is gone, and it is the first time that the image strikes her as unbearably heartbreaking.

_(They come across a dead star fish on the shore that night. Satoshi presses closer to her, crumples the edge of her summer dress into his tiny fists and asks, in a soft voice, _why isn't it moving?_ Takashi kneels before the star fish and throws it into the sea. Haruhi shivers. In the distance, the stars refuse to shine. The three of them stare at the sky, pitch-black and seemingly dead, and the water laps at their feet, as if to seek forgiveness for the sad fate __called __death__, absolution for something it cannot change_

Dead stars, huh? _She says to Takashi. He looks at her, and his eyes reflect the water. The air is crisp and cool, and a northern wind caresses her then-long hair. He lays his hand on h__e__r head, and everything seems alright._

_It takes a while before one of them realizes that Satoshi is already curled up against Haruhi's leg, asleep._)

Haruhi smiles a little, pointing at a picture of 'the birthday party from hell', as Takashi likes to call it. "And this one is Satoshi's favorite."

Takashi does not remove his eyes from his paper. He wants it to be perfect, Haruhi tells herself patiently, so let him search for non-existent mistakes. Let him find faults where there is none. Let her do the same to him, too.

She sets the album aside. "Are you sure you're alright?" She asks, genuinely concerned.

Takashi seems to sense this, but does not make an effort to look at her. "Yeah."

Gently, she rests her fingers on the back of his hand, and he tenses under her touch. "You're stiffer than usual."

He looks at her, then, and eternity passes in the space of a second. Suddenly, she realizes that _the gap has gotten wider_. There are remnants of the Takashi then hidden in her memories, but there is something sad about the difference between the two that create this person. "I'm just tired."

"Oh. Alright then," she strokes the spine of the book, ever so carefully, and says, "I'll just put this back where it belongs."

This is the part where he is supposed to say _no, don't put it away, I'll look at it with you in just a few seconds_. This is the part where he looks at her and smiles at her apologetically. This is the part where he does not say ---

"You do that."

Something in her feels resentful that he is breaking tradition, but she leaves before she can say anything else. And a small, spiteful, hateful part of her whispers, _he is forgetting, and he is forgetting _you. It says it in soft, subdued tones, as delicate and hurtful as thawing ice. She feels like she is going to drown in it.

Her heart beats in her chest.

And it says, with striking finality, words that it should never have said:

_I would never forget you_.

In the precise formality of Kyouya's words, in the exact voice of _him_, all calm and collected and alluringly deceptive.

Something in her crumbles, and she feels cold inside.

_When winter came, she began to love the cold. Each day, she would hold a magnifying glass over hear coat while the snowflakes fell on it._

Somehow it does not surprise her when she sees Kyouya in the library more often than usual. They sit together, side by side, parallel lines in a plane that inch closer everyday to find an intersection to fit in somewhere. His presence, at first, alarms her, because there is something dark and profound in his soul that sticks out like a stain on the fabric of his sleeve. But, however he may seem to be, beside her, his skin is warm.

Two things may be the reason for this: one, that he is human, and two, he is capable of feeling.

Perhaps he is more human than Hikaru claims he is.

Outside the library, Haruhi does not pay attention to him. No trace of recognition in her eyes, no tinge of regret to spare for his presence. This is normal, she tells herself. This is how things are and the way things should be.

Denial is a kind of deception. You deceive only yourself.

It seems that Kyouya is hell-bent on defying the odds, because, when she passes by him in the hallway one day, he meets her gaze and nods respectfully to acknowledge her worth.

Beside her, Hikaru glares and Kaoru stares, and her heart flutters in her chest, like a bird in a cage.

She nods back.

(She does not miss Kyouya's smirk or Hikaru's narrowed eyes. Kaoru's shoulders slump in defeat, but all that is incomparable to this strange emotion of building bridges across an unfamiliar river called familiarity. What does it matter that she knows little of him? The hard-headed part of hers, the part that may have been her conscience, says that he is her friend, and who is she to doubt him?)

There are only two directions for them to go: up or down. Eventually, she thinks, they will overlap, or never reach each other at all.

_One day she went to the marketplace and fastened her sled behind a large white sleigh to prove that she was bold and strong and grown-up now._

On her way to the library, Hikaru blocks her passage. She stops in her tracks, curious eyes trained on him. For the first time today, Hikaru bitterly notes, she has looked at him and him alone.

Picture this: the boy wraps his arms around her shakily, crushes her to him as if to suffocate her with such close proximity, and breathes into her hair and whispers, _no_.

_Why,_ she asks, _why won't you let me go to him? Why won't you stop?_

_I love you_, he answers desperately, and in his voice is a plea, a command, a resolution.

That is not what happens, although she thinks that if Hikaru were stronger, it might have happened, and she would not be as unaffected as he is now. Instead, the only thing in her mind is this: he is waiting, and she has promised to be there.

Would she have accepted his love? Would she have left? There are a million (unvoiced) unanswered questions in their minds. But there is only one thing she knows: Hikaru's grip is firm and strong, but it cannot stop her form leaving, not even if she cries and begs him to let go.

Later, Haruhi cradles a bruised arm, and when Satoshi asks her about it, she waves him off with her free hand and says simply, "I don't know."

It is the closest she can get to telling the truth.

_The sleigh began to pull away, and the driver turned around to nod to her in a friendly way, as if they had known each other before. Every time she tried to unfasten her sled, the driver nodded again, so she sat very still, and they drove swiftly out of town._

There are several stories that always make her cry. _La petite sirène_ is one of them.

It starts simply: there is a little mermaid whose ambition extends only to that of exploring the area beyond the sea. She does not know that ambition leads to only two things: success or failure. Pandora rises from her confines and opens the box of the outside world, and she rescues a handsome prince from the waves that, once, lulled her to a soothing sleep. What was once so beautiful to her then seem to pale in comparison to this wonderful human.

How beautiful he is. How beautiful it is to feel like this.

Perhaps it is love. Perhaps it is not. She is only sure of one thing: she must see him again.

That is the disaster of love, and it is what makes her eyes begin to hurt.

Kyouya holds her cheek, like so. In his hands, her face feels like a precious stone, always readily observed but never really understood. He holds her face like it is the only thing that he could bear to touch, like a professional jeweler. "It's only fiction," he says, and his voice is empty. Like artificial glass. "No need to get so worked up about it."

She raises her hand to press against the corner of her eye and lets him sweep away the water in her eyes and the last regrets in her mind.

How cold he is. How cold and unbelievably callous and gentle.

_The snow began to fall so thickly that the little girl could not see her hand before her as they drove along. She tried to unfasten the cord to get free of the sleigh, but it was no use. She cried out, but no one heard her._

_The snowflakes grew larger and larger until they appeared to be great white birds. The sleigh stopped, and the figure who was driving stood up. It was a boy, tall and slim and majestic. His cloak and cap were made entirely of snow. It was _him

"_We have made good time," he said, "but you are almost frozen. Creep in under my cloak."_

_And he held her close to him in the sleigh. She felt as though she were sinking slowly into a snowdrift._

He is always the one who initiates a conversation, and his questions are always curious, provocative, _malicious_, at most.

Sometimes he asks her about Hikaru and Kaoru. She does not divulge answers to his questions without questions of her own, and conversing with Kyouya fills her with a strange sense of calmness and accomplishment, because she can tell that he is pleased with her quiet determination (nay, stubbornness, in fact). Still, it disturbs her that he tries to fit into her life while she knows nothing of him aside from what she hears.

That he is a manipulative schemer (Kaoru's words), a mastermind and genius in his own right (Hunny-senpai's), a "cold-hearted son of a bitch" (Hikaru's). That he has two brilliant brothers and one over-affectionate sister and a father who expects too much from his youngest child. That he is a (shrewd) skilled businessman out to satisfy his dangerous ambitions. That she is not like him and should never learn to like him, because he is everything but good for her.

("Kyouya is Kyouya," shrugs Kaoru, and even Hikaru has to agree with that.)

Because he is Kyouya, he knows more than he lets on, and she quickly learns that he does not care if she is offended that he runs background checks on her frequently. Her opinion of him, apparently, does not matter when weighed against the opportunity to solve the puzzle that is Haruhi.

She wishes that he realizes that she is not complex at all.

It is a Friday today, and he comments on the weather and they make small talk. For five minutes, at least, because he easily gets bored and would rather get straight to the point in his own complicated (rude) way.

It starts, suddenly, like this:

"Morinozuka-senpai seems to spend less time with you."

She looks up from _east of the sun, west of the moon_, and wonders if he is being tiresome for a reason.

He crosses his legs and leans against the chair, smug in his comfort zone, and resumes his tone of a casual gossiper, even if he is anything but that. "Rumor has it that he is trailing after a girl in his statistics class. I think they were partners in a project, once."

Something in her freezes, and she _should have expected this from him_.

If there is one thing that she knows about him, it is this: that Kyouya knows about the human psyche, that envy is part of the human heart, and that it is the best way to play with a person's uncertainty.

Kyouya watches her with half-lidded eyes, the slight curve of his lashes resting on the fingers splayed across his eyes. It gives her something to stare at. She wants to look at him accusingly, but, she realizes, Kyouya's gaze makes it impossible to do so, when it is he that makes her feel ashamed.

"He doesn't need you," he murmurs, as if stating a fact, and the words are given life when they are vocalized by him. It seeps through her bones, chilling realizations of the inevitable, and makes her throat burn with protests.

_But you wouldn't know_, her heart screams, _how could you have known?_

Instead, she shrugs and sets her (sweaty) hands on her lap. They are shaking as she struggles to find the words. "He has never needed me."

If Kyouya has noticed her state, if Kyouya even has an ounce of guilt in his veins, he does not show it. His lips purse in contemplation, and when he begins to speak she is prepared to block him out. "He might have depended on your _compassion_ once upon a time." The word does not slide out of his tongue, as most of his words often do. Rather, it comes out as an unbecoming hiss, so much so that it unnerves her and makes her blood turn cold.

"You were very close, weren't you?" Kyouya lets his gaze fall on the windowsill. Unconsciously, Haruhi follows his gaze. There is a thin layer of dust, a vague tell-tale sign that no one ever looks at the scenery anymore. "But he brushes you off and makes no time for you. Isn't that odd?"

She straightens her back, her posture stiff and cold. "It is not his obligation to."

Outside, she is composed. Inside, she shakes like a leaf and bleeds.

Kyouya's voice is so soothing, so gentle, but there is a kind of sharpness that cuts through her as he drawls, "Is that so?"

It is a challenge, perhaps. Or a subtle message that she has been wrong all this time.

She takes the bait.

Something in her tells her to leave, but if there is one fault in Haruhi, it is that she ignores gut instinct and common sense in favor of defending the people she loves.

It does not even matter if they do not love her back, as long as she can keep protecting them.

"Yes," she affirms, "it is so."

Kyouya smiles then, and, for a brief moment, she feels that she has won this round, but he toys with her insecurities as mercilessly as an executioner beheading a mother of four.

"Perhaps," he wonders aloud, "he does not care for you as much as he claims to."

She feels numb, now. She feels that she has pained herself enough, like digging deeper at a scar that cannot heal because it is not given the chance to.

It makes her feel so tired. Kyouya's smile makes her feel so drained.

Haruhi recalls a distant memory of a warning. _Never let him get too close. He could break your heart._ Now she feels like it is too late to leave, and that he has crushed it under his heel too many times for it to even exist anymore. This is her point of no return.

"_Are you still cold?" he asked, and kissed her on the forehead. The kiss was as cold as ice and reached down to her heart, which was already frozen into half a lump of ice._

_He kissed her again, and she forgot all about the little boy and everybody else at home._

"_Now I must not kiss you anymore," he said, "or I will kiss you to death."_

She sits on a bench outside the school buildings, a cup of hot coffee in her hands. It warms her skin, but the warmth fails to reach her heart, which is as cold as the November morning.

Students pass by her in twos or threes. Familiar faces nod at her and wave good afternoon, and she tries to smile back but it fails to reach her eyes. Kaoru blows a kiss at her in jest, but Hikaru keeps his eyes trained to the distance, because he is still hurt and upset.

She does not blame him for being unable to find it in his heart to forgive her. She does not even forgive herself for not listening to them.

Half an hour later and someone's feet step on the grass behind her, making a crunching sound. She finishes the rest of her drink and does not turn around.

Kyouya's fingers fist in her hair. It does not hurt her at all, but she tenses slightly under his touch, as if in anticipation of the words that may probably never be said at all. They remain hidden in his eyes, but the knowledge that they are _there_ makes her unable to feel anything but resigned.

"Are you still sad?" He asks by way of greeting, his breath visible in the winter atmosphere. She blinks and shakes her head, a severe line set on her lips. It makes her feel a little bitter that he does not feel any remorse for his unkindness.

He regards her silently, and asks, "Can I kiss you?"

She does not know what to feel. Surprise. Shock. Incredulity at the absurd request. She opens her mouth to say no, but the words die in her throat when he leans forward and presses his lips to hers in a gesture that makes her heart weep. For a moment, she is briefly aware of how warm his breath is.

When he pulls away, Haruhi wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and rests her head on his chest, unable to look at him. Should she feel happy? Should she feel disgusted? Should she thank him? Everything is a frightening, confusing jumble, and she cannot condition her mind properly.

That is what makes emotions so difficult. They cannot give you enough space to think.

He sighs and gazes at her in what could only be described as fondness, and he kisses her forehead, mouthing against her skin, "you are so hopeless."

She does not understand what he means. She is not sure if she wants to know.

_Then away they flew over the forests and lakes, over sea and land. Around them whistled the cold wind, the wolves howled and the snow hissed; over them flew the black shrieking crows. But high up the moon shone large and bright, and thus she passed the long winter night. During the day, she slept at the boy's feet._


	4. the magic garden

**t****he magic garden**

* * *

_But what happened to the little boy when the little girl did not come back? And what had become of her?_

* * *

It takes half a month or more before Takashi realizes something is missing and a few more days after that before he realizes what it is. It exists, at first, like a strange and dim fog of awareness, too transparent to be grasped and not concrete enough to be understood. He has been too preoccupied with his studies for far too long that he has not gone out for the sake of leisure for weeks now. He tries to find it in between obscure texts of classical literature and papers on Japan's economy, tries to perceive it in between rows and rows of essays that need to be read, reread, revised and submitted, or in the coffee mugs from the café near the university that always leave him drowsy and out of it.

December is nearing its end and he has not given much thought about Christmas yet. Outside, the snow keeps falling from the sky, mounds of it unplowed in the streets of Tokyo. He has yet to see the sun. Vaguely, he remembers a line, something about snowflakes and people not being as unique as them. He must be going insane.

His routine is the same. Wake up at 6:00. Eat breakfast with Satoshi, mother, and, rarely, father. Go to school. Attend classes. Go home. Study. Meditate. Practice kendo. Eat dinner. Sleep. Once in a while, a particularly unbalancing social function is inserted into the schedule. A boring life, he thinks, but to do otherwise would have its consequences, fatal or not.

He removes his gloves once he steps inside the car that has been patiently waiting for him for half an hour. His hands and feet are numb from the cold and his fingers ache from jotting down notes that are still perfectly readable, still in bold, elegant strokes that he has been practicing for years. He does not take off his coat or his scarf. In this weather, he could not afford to lose more body warmth.

Some days, Takashi really and truly hates December, with its frostiness merged with its holiday cheer. There are children in the park he passes by, and some of them are making snow bunnies with eyes made of candy, marbles, or whatever bright colored object they have in their pockets. It reminds him of something, but he cannot put his finger on it.

Because Satoshi's class ends half an hour after his, he tells the driver to go directly to Ouran. Some young girls look at him curiously (and a little interestedly), pretty little things with their branded coats and expensive gloves, some still with braided hairs and some in more elaborate hairstyles, all of them ready for the winter break. Takashi waits for Satoshi in the lobby, a well-lit, luxuriously furnished Westernized room intended to impress and suit the extravagance its students have known for their entire lives. He has walked through these halls before, and a part of him knows it and misses it, but some parts of him are simply glad that he has finally gotten away. It used to be so unbearable then, but even that thought exists only as a thought, as if disconnected from the actual memory. High school is like that. Maybe, he thinks, college will seem like high school too, in the future – a translucent, fleeting memory of long months and longer hours that sum up a fraction of a person's life.

It is strange how the formation and education is surreal in the mind, as if it has never existed. Takashi has been foolish enough to say (or, at the least, think) that he will never forget better days spent in Ouran, but now – now, he is struggling to remember, and even in that battle he does not emerge triumphant. Perhaps the requirement for a memory to withstand the test of time is for it to be writ in paper, recorded as accurately or clinically for it to be true, and as personal for it to be real.

One day, he will even forget that thought. It does not take too long. He forgets it as soon as Satoshi comes up to him and greets him with a nod.

They enter the car in a half-stiff, half-comfortable silence. Takashi has always been of a taciturn disposition, preferring the quiet that life has to offer over the loudness and vigor of youth, and Satoshi has always been a little in awe (a little intimidated) of his brother to intrude in the simple joys his brother cannot have as often as he wants. It is, perhaps, an affair of respect, founded on little words and lesser arguments. It is better this way.

But Takashi (who has always relied on his gut feeling) is still perturbed, his mind a jumble of words and ideas, and it makes the silence more awkward than it should be. Satoshi steals glances at him, until he finally exhales and says, exasperatedly, "alright, what's wrong?"

Takashi looks up, a little startled to be interrupted from his distracted thoughts, and flexes his fingers, trying to regain more feeling in them. "It's nothing. It's just…"

Satoshi's eyebrows rise a little higher expectantly.

"I keep feeling like I've left something behind, or something's left me," says Takashi uncertainly.

Satoshi looks at him in concealed amazement and disbelief, but says nothing, as if waiting for him to continue. He does.

"It doesn't make sense, though. What have I forgotten?" He wonders, and thinks. Even then, he still cannot find his answer, and Satoshi offers him no clues. He is sure of one thing, though: it feels like he has lost a part of himself.

* * *

_Nobody knew what had happened to the little girl. Someone, though, told the boy how he had seem her fasten her sled to another, larger one which had driven out of the town. The boy cried a great deal. The winter was long and dark for him._

_Then the spring came and with it the warm sunshine. He thought to himself: I must find her._

* * *

He finds his answer by accident (or luck, perhaps, because every accident depends on luck) at a gathering hosted by a family friend.

There is a young girl there that stands out in a room full of older men and women. She is a shy bud amidst a room full of leaves; in her white dress, she looks more youthful and innocent than ever. Takashi's mother eyes them keenly when they are seated next to each other during dinner. There is a strange smile on his mother's lips, and her mother is conversing with his, as if they are making a business deal, or a criticizing art. Takashi dances with her more out of politeness than anything else when his mother suggests it, and her hand is soft and warm even through their gloves. Still, Takashi cannot help but think as he stares into her moon-like eyes that Haruhi is far more beautiful than she is.

Just like that, he remembers. All he has ever needed is an unconscious reminder, or a push in the right direction.

One cannot blame him, then, for stopping half-way to seek out his brother.

"Satoshi," he says, his voice a mixture of frightened relief and strangled anxiety, "when was the last time you saw Haruhi?"

Satoshi fixes him with the same stare he has given days ago. It is then that Takashi knows that he understands all too well. When he speaks, his voice is laced with something like pity. "Nii-san, she hasn't visited us for three weeks."

He should have expected this. It is like a crushing blow that leaves him in a half-dazed, half-deflated state, makes him incoherent and unable to identify anything with a critical eye. A passing youth near his age looks at him with a wry, discomfiting smile. Takashi knows it means something, but he feels too weak to consider it. He shivers.

He goes home with a heavy heart and the lame excuse of feeling too ill and spends the ride home calling her a few times. It is temporarily unavailable, the operator says, and Takashi looks at his phone in disbelief. This has never happened before.

When he manages to make his way to his room lock the door behind him, he crawls under the covers and stares at the phone in his hand until he falls asleep.

The evening passes soundlessly, but he feels colder and more alone. Come morning, the sun is out and the snow falls off the tree branches in great heaps. It almost feels like a rebirth, but he has always been a no-nonsense person, so he views nature as it is and this scene as a problem.

His mind is tired, his body cold, but his heart is still alive, with the kind of fervor reserved for lovers, madmen, or the desperate alike.

There is a redeemable point in his character which some consider as his greatest flaw. He does not easily give up.

A month is too long for it to be dismissed so easily. He knows, however, that he does not want to stop chasing after her, despite the announcement the day after from his mother concerning his future and an arranged marriage with a wonderful young woman of their acquaintance.

* * *

_He went down the path to the river and climbed into a boat that lay on the bank. The stream carried it away. It glided along, passing trees and fields; he saw a large orchard, in which stood a strangely colored house. The current swept the boat straight towards the bank. He started to call out, and an old woman came out of the house. She leaned upon a crutch and wore a sunhat painted with beautiful flowers._

_She stepped into the water, brought the boat in close, and lifted the little boy out. "And now come and tell me who you are and how you came here," she told him, and led him into the house and shut the door._

* * *

Takashi has always been a logical and practical boy.

If one fails to contact a person, hoping against hope that luck would be on your side is pointless and emotionally draining. Takashi knows the difficulty of waiting. He suddenly recollects, with mute regret, how Haruhi must have been waiting for him to notice.

He visits Haruhi's house, but finds out from her father that "she's been going out a lot these days, leaving her poor father all alone!" Then he tries Hikaru and Kaoru, simply because he does not know who else to rely on.

Information gathering, however, is simply not his forte. The twins alternate between looking pissed (half at him, and half for another reason entirely) and looking depressed. At least, he's seen signs of repression from both of them, and that's not psychologically healthy. This is how he concludes that something is Very Fucked Up Indeed, and that's just putting it mildly. The only thing he gets from Hikaru is an angry "that bastard" muttered in between glares and grimaces.

He still does not know who Hikaru is referring to. It leaves him at a loss, to put it simply. The twins are the only friends of hers that he has had the fortune of knowing. He winds up, instead, at Mitsukuni's house, disturbed and despondent enough to resort to drastic measures.

The strange thing about it, though, is that Mitsukuni (despite having surprising moments of depth and full comprehension) seems to _know_ what is wrong before he even says anything. Takashi realizes this as soon as he is shown into the room and greets Mitsukuni good afternoon, because Mitsukuni opens the door a little wider and says, sympathetically, "I was afraid you would never come. Would you like some tea?"

Dumbly, Takashi accepts the invitation, although it feels, strangely, like he is going to confession before dying.

* * *

_The windows were very high and painted with different colors, so that the light came through in strange hues. On the table was a bowl of delicious cherries, and she let him eat as many as he liked, while she combed his hair with a gold comb. __And as she did so, he thought less and less of the little girl, for the woman was a witch, but not a wicked one. She went into the garden and waved her stick over the rose bushes, and they disappeared into the black earth, leaving no trace of their existence._

_The little boy played in the garden till the sun set behind the tall cherry trees for many days. He knew every flower in the garden, but it seemed to him as if there was one missing. He could not remember which._

_One day, he looked at the woman's sun hat, and there he saw a rose. The little boy cried when he did not find roses in the garden, but his tears fell on the spot where a rose bush had sunk, and the bush came up in full bloom as it had been before. He kissed the roses and thought of the ones at home, and with that thought he remembered the little girl._

* * *

Mitsukuni begins, a little awkwardly but managing to hide it with his archness, with a question regarding his health. Takashi tries to answer as truthfully as he could, although he is still a little confused. His mind is still in disarray. There is the matter of his impending exams, his possible nuptials, and, of course, everything begins and ends with Haruhi. Mitsukuni nods and pats his hand with Usa-chan's lifeless ones.

"That's alright," he says sanguinely, "everyone is, at first. Confused, I mean."

It's times like this that makes him wonder how close he and Mitsukuni could have been if he had not made room for Haruhi in the earlier stages of his life. Perhaps Mitsukuni is his best friend, but what is Haruhi, then? Some part of him wishes to say that she is a fragment of his heart, but it would not do her enough justice.

Mitsukuni tries to distract him from his thoughts, ever the entertainer. He is successful enough in his execution of such a goal. He recounts and invents stories of school and friends, from the amusing (melodramatic) Suoh, to the equally entertaining Houshakuji. But, as all entertainers are wont to do, he himself is carried away by the flow of the conversation, and a slip of tongue is unavoidable.

He mentions Ohtori, and immediately colors. "Oh," he says, a little ashamed at himself, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't bring him up."

Takashi wakes up from his hazy trance. "Why?"

Mitsukuni's surprise is evident enough; his expression quickly morphs to pity as he nibbles on his parfait. "Didn't you know? He's the one who stole Haruhi away."

Takashi's blood turns cold.

In the space of a few minutes, minus the formalities and the stories, Mitsukuni has told him more than he manages to know in three hours. He does not know, however, if the new found knowledge is worth treating as a threat, or if it is not. He knows little of the youngest Ohtori, the boy who he converses with, sometimes, when in the company of socialites, the youth who smirked at him the other day, the one who always felt too distant, too cold, like ice.

_Haruhi_, he thinks to himself, _what are you doing? _Although it is clear to him, even in this darkness, that he has only himself to blame.

He says his goodbyes, and Mitsukuni nods, still consoling as ever, failing to muster enough cheerfulness to do any more. He looks like he wants to hug him, but can't. Takashi steps out of the house and into the daylight, and checks his watch.

Time to go home.

He is not surprised to find the girl from the party there.

* * *

_He ran to the end of the garden. The gate was shut, but he pushed against the rusty lock so that it swung open. No one came after him. When he could not run any longer, he sat down on a large stone. Summer was over; it was already nearing the end of autumn. The seasons had never changed in the garden, where it was eternally summer._

_All around him it became colder and colder._


	5. the prince and the princess

**the prince and the princess**

* * *

_After a while, the little boy had to rest again. While he was sitting, he looked up and saw a large crow._

* * *

Takashi is used to strangers disguised as friendly visitors coming in and out of the household. He does not think much of this one, at first, and it is his mistake not to quicken his pace as he makes his way to his own room.

Before he is able to walk completely past the drawing room, his mother calls out his name with as much warmth as she could muster. It is the first time she has directed this much amount of feeling since she has left her regrets with the dead – a very long time indeed, but she finds no need for such trivial emotions. For what use does she have for her heart? She certainly was not brought up to be a mother; their family dictates that they become, first and foremost, loyal servants, and people of importance, character and wealth. It is enough to make him stop in his tracks.

He remembers watching his parents argue in the privacy of their room. "When I love, I get left behind," his mother wailed. From then on, he vows to never set foot in there again. He is not used to seeing his mother as human – flawed, imperfect, and filled with bitter recriminations. He thinks to himself that it is the first time he has seen her this tired.

And after that, he does not see her as such again. She has perfected the art of pretending too much to let it go.

Takashi ends up feeling a little cold and frozen up inside, as if the North wind has blown its way into his lungs, his chest, his heart.

He does not like it one bit.

He inclines his head towards her, and does an admirable job at not reeling back in surprise at her friendly countenance. Beside her sits a guest, obviously the reason for such excellent dramatics, welcome and unwelcome all at once. When he first saw her, he thought she was Haruhi. Now, he wonders what could have possessed him to admit such thoughts into his mind.

He nods at both of them, swiftly and coolly, and reluctantly steps forward to his mother with a questioning glance at the visitor. She ignores his unvoiced question by turning her attentions to the girl, who simpers and blushes as any well-bred young woman of any remarkable lineage is taught to do. Takashi spends half an hour studying her, and, when it gets to be too much, he stops looking at her and listening to her idle, slightly nervous chatter in favor of examining the pastries set on the coffee table. He makes the mistake of observing his mother, once. The exposed skin of her slender arms is white and smooth, as if it has not seen an hour's worth of work in her entire lifetime (it hasn't). The way she holds her tea cup reminds him of a predator observing an unsuspecting meal. If he even bothers to look at her face, he would know that it is impassive and calculating.

_Unnecessary_, he thinks to himself. She does not have to be this kind, as far as her concept of kindness goes. Unless, of course…

He turns his attention to the younger woman. (His mother allows herself to smile a little, at this. He does not acknowledge this visible suggestion of triumph.) She is young enough for him, he thinks, and, certainly, his mother is of the opinion that it is best if she finds a suitable woman for him to marry, but the truth is that he cannot help it if he compares her to his first love; surely this girl (or any other woman) is far superior to the other in aspects of the aristocracy, but she would not – could not – stand to be weighed against the value of another whose rank is perceptibly far beneath that of theirs. It would be an insult insupportable to any other of his kind.

(With this, he toasts to himself in slight success. Few people would accuse him of carrying the arrogance that his family's wealth and power is automatically attached to, but he himself has this flaw, only in occasion. No one else needs to remind him of that.)

The guest leaves as he samples the pomegranates in the fruit basket. He does not look up at her when she says the obligatory thanks. He cannot bear to.

He does not even know her name, nor does he wish to know it.

Arrogant, indeed. Or, perhaps, something else.

_If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two._

* * *

_The crow had been looking at him for some time. It asked him where he was going all alone like that in the world, and he told the crow his story. When he asked the crow if it had seen or heard of anything about the little girl, the crow nodded very thoughtfully and said, "It might be! It _might _be!_

"_It might be her, but she has forgotten you for the prince!"_

* * *

The door shuts, and with it comes the veritable tide of indignations and suggestions that the girl has left with. He remains to face the onslaught of his mother's estimations.

"Don't look so sullen," she says with a hint of exasperation as he spears the cake in front of him with a fork, "I only want to know what you thought of her."

A million protests and complaints enter his mind. Even then, he cannot say all of them. He is not in the habit of being very expressive of the inner workings of his brain. "I don't like her." She raises an eyebrow at that. "I don't dislike her, either."

"Then what," his mother says, very slowly, as she is wont to do when extremely displeased and faced with the blunt edge of his stubbornness, "are you trying to say?"

His mouth runs a little dry. _I won't marry her. I won't, I won't._ "I don't care for her." _Not even a little bit. Not even at all._ How wonderfully honest. How honest and obstinate and single-minded as a fairytale protagonist.

"You'll learn to, in time," Her index finger encircles the rim of her cup and taps impatiently on the edge of the handle twice, a sign of her increasing impatience. Takashi has to hide his frown by sipping his tea, even if it is scalding and bitter. "Arranged marriages don't work the way you think it does. It's not horrible, really."

Her voice begins to change a little as she begins to caress the flowers in the vase set on the coffee table. He feels a little in danger, somewhat. "Or, perhaps, I should search for more promising young ladies that suit your type?" She says coyly, an indirect provocation that gets on his nerves. She holds up her flawlessly manicured nails; they glint ominously under the light. "Dark-haired, doe-eyed dolls to be put on display. Beautiful objects that suit your fancy and mine." Her eyes darken, a little. "People we come to know and love without any effort at all."

It is too much. "Haruhi," he announces, eyes meeting hers, "is not a doll."

There are days when he feels that he cannot understand his mother, and with this comes the feeling that he will never be able to love her if she were not precisely that. Today is not one of them.

Today, he feels crushed under her weight. He feels a little more like a pawn and less like the son she claims he is. He is powerless in her presence, but it is this that makes him feel more capable of fighting back.

She looks a little surprised, even angry, as if he has hit a harsh note. For a moment, he catches a glimpse of her weaknesses in her eyes. They look a little lost, a little afraid.

He realizes this: there is no way to make her truly and completely happy again.

"Did I," she pauses in the middle of her sentence, fumbling as she tries to find the right words, "say anything about Haruhi?"

When she says her name, it sounds like a reverent prayer, or the ghost of another name that she cannot speak of in his company. He begins, then, to feel repentant of his retaliation.

"No," he answers, quietly, gently, feeling as if their roles were suddenly reversed.

They regard each other thoughtfully, as if measuring up the sum of their lives through five minutes worth of words said in the heat of the argument, wondering whatever happened to them and if they could ever fix it. But Takashi knows that she is merely repairing her broken façade, and that he is preparing for another match.

"I've arranged another meeting with her," she resumes the conversation with a business-like air, "she's the daughter of a well-known broadcasting corporation CEO, didn't you know?

"I didn't catch her name," he answers in the plainest tone he could gather, just to humor her. She seems a little pleased at his effort.

He has to curse the slight bloom of pride in his chest. It cannot be helped, the way we seek approval for the things we say or do in the face of those we love.

"Yes," she says, "yes, you never do."

He wants to say, _I did, once_. He wants to take her hand into his and tell her that she should stop trying.

He can't.

"Mother," he swallows the trepidation in his gut. She looks up at him, because it is the first time he has ever called her 'mother' in this way. "Mother, I don't need this."

Her lips press against each other and form a straight, displeased line. "I'm your mother and I'm telling you that you do."

He lets his hands rest on his lap, just so he could hide the way his fingers curl a little and tighten as he struggles not to appear like a child. "Since when was Haruhi never enough?" he whispers, and she hits the table with her right hand and stands up in a fit of fury.

"Since when was she _ever_ enough?" She half-shouts, and he notices, for the first time, that this is the way she tries to prevent herself from crying, from feeling the flood of grief as it soaks her bones and rests in her heart for an interminable amount of time. They stare at each other, one incensed, the other stunned, until his mother loosens her grip on the back of her chair with the other hand and sinks to it as if she has somehow lost her soul in the process. When she continues, she sounds as if she has also lost the will to live. "She's a wonderful child," she says, and he has to wonder if she has not practiced this, if she has not told herself the same things over and over again when she sits in front of the mirror and remembers things she would rather bury with the dead, "but she lacks rank. Power. Wealth. Influence.

"Everything that matters, she doesn't have," she finishes, not looking at him this time; it makes him think that she is talking to herself.

"That doesn't matter," he says resolutely, bowing his head a little. It hurts to watch her like this. "Not to me."

With that, he stands up and leaves the room without looking back. For all he knows, she may still be staring in the distance at another person, in another time.

He thinks that she never heard him at all.

* * *

"_Won't you lead me to that palace?" the little boy asked._

"_That's easily asked!" scoffed the crow, "but how are we to manage that? But I may as well tell you that you could never get permission to enter the palace."_

"_I will get in!" said the little boy. "When she hears that I am here, she will come out at once and fetch me!"_

* * *

He is wrong, of course. It is not the first time.

His mother summons him to the same drawing room after dinner, where she spreads a hundred different pictures on the coffee table with gentleness and none of her usual alacrity. He sifts through them, one by one, as she speaks from her seat.

"Sooner or later, you'll find that they do matter." Here is a picture of her on her wedding day. She is splendidly dressed in an elaborate kimono for the _shinzen shiki_ at a large Shinto shrine. She is smiling, a little, but it seems as if she is smiling at the photographer and not for her own enjoyment. It is an informal picture, something that seems to have been taken with a cheap camera, unprofessional but clearly treasured for sentimental reasons. "I married your father for these reasons." Here is a picture of her sons, both dressed in western formal wear. Satoshi looks as if he is near tears, and Takashi is still and unaffected even as he holds his brother's hand in an effort to keep him motionless even for a few minutes. "Look at how successful we are and have always been."

Takashi's fingers curl a little when they grasp an old picture of a woman few people remember now. He's always known it, but now that he has proof in the form of keepsakes painstakingly kept and hidden, the realization settles slowly in his mind.

"But you were never happy here with us," he murmurs, holding her head to his stomach gently to support her weight. She lets her hands come to rest at his sides. "Before Haruhi came."

"I don't want you to regret anything," she whispers, defeated and undone. Hearing this makes his fingers involuntarily comb through her hair when she begins to cry without making a sound. This is how it must be, he thinks, to love a dead person without understanding it.

He takes a deep breath and waits for her body to stop trembling before he speaks. "I don't regret her."

(When he says it, it sounds infinite and definitive. When was the last time he ever said anything that left him proud and humbled at the same time?)

"It's too late," she tells him, her words coming out in a labored hiss, "an Ohtori has taken her away."

"It's too late," she repeats, and Takashi curls inward and holds on to her a little tighter, a little longer.

* * *

_Later that evening they went into the place garden, and when the lights were put out, they went through the back door._

_The little boy's heart beat with anxiety and eagerness. He wanted so much to know if it were her. He could see her in his mind's eye smiling as she did when they were at home under the rose trees. She would be so happy to see him._

_Now they were on the stairs. The little boy took a lamp that was burning on the top of the stairs and they made their way through many rooms. Finally, they came to the bed chamber, where there were two beds shaped like lilies. The prince lay on one, and, in the other, the little boy hoped it was the little girl. He pushed back the curtain and saw a slim neck. He called her name out loud, holding the lamp toward her._

_She woke up and turned her head._

_It was not the little girl._

_The little boy cried._

* * *

He wakes up, the next day, feeling oddly refreshed.

His mother is not present at breakfast, excusing herself with business. Satoshi is puzzled, as his mother rarely makes it a point to miss breakfast, but does not press the issue. Takashi is grateful for that, at least.

In the car, he picks up his PDA and goes through his schedule. He has a class in the morning, and a meeting with his adviser afterwards. It is too tiring to go through this day without fearing that he will go mad from not being in contact with Haruhi.

He comes to class and finds out that it is cancelled from a classmate. He considers hanging out with a few people in his class; the day is cool enough to spend in the company of a crowd exchanging mundane stories and catching up with those he has not talked to in a long time. He is about to accept the invitation from one of them when he catches a glimpse of short, dark brown hair in the distance.

He does not even pause to think; he begins to run after her.

What should he say or do? He knows he should apologize, and that she would be righteously angry, at first. But they would be alright, anyway, because they've never held grudges, right? _Yes_, his mind supplies feverishly, _it will be okay_. He cannot even bear to think of the worst case scenario. He would be lost without her and --

"Haruhi!" He half-shouts, and grasps her shoulder to stop her from walking away. She turns her head, eyes wide with surprise, and --

It is not Haruhi.

He immediately feels a rush of embarrassment. "Sorry. I thought you were someone else."

The girl recovers from her shock quickly, and laughs a little. "That's alright," she says, "I got that a lot when I cut my hair."

"Kuragano," a thin, gangly boy with glasses calls out to her, "we're going to be late for class!" The boy looks a little peeved at seeing her with him. Takashi can't help but wonder if he's jealous.

"In a minute!" She shouts back, laughing a little and waving him off with a shooing motion. The other boy frowns a little as he walks off. Kuragano smiles as she watches him leave, and when she turns her attention to Takashi, the smile she gives him is a different sort. More friendly, less soft. "I'm Kuragano Momoka. You're Morinozuka-san, right?"

He blinks and nods. He doesn't know how to reply to that.

"Haruhi's a girl in my Econ class," she informs him, "I saw her in the library earlier, but she probably has a class right now."

"I…" He says very intelligently, then clears his throat and looks away. "Thanks."

He leaves before she can say anything else, but his heart beats wildly in his chest with each step he takes. He now knows his destination; the only problem is getting her back.

It makes him wish that it doesn't feel as if he is running out of time.

* * *

_The prince and the princess put the little boy into bed, and he thought to himself as he fell asleep, "how good people are to me!"_

_The next day he was dressed from head to foot in warm clothes and given a little carriage, a horse, and a pair of shoes for her journey. When the crow had said goodbye, it flew up to a tree and flapped its big black wings for as long as the carriage was in sight._


End file.
